For decades now, we have been told that the only way to safely lose weight was through the tried and true tandem of diet and exercise.

But what if I told you that not only could you lose weight but also balance your cholesterol eating nothing but junk food...

Too good to be true, right?

Wrong... I give you the "Twinkie Diet"...

Eating Shit to Live...

Imagine what you would look like if for ten weeks you ate nothing but Twinkies, Swiss Rolls, Nutty Bars, and Doritos...

Bet your thinking something along the lines of ten pounds of day old mashed potatoes in a very sweaty five pound bag.

But suppose you ended up losing weight after it all...

Would you believe it???

But that is exactly what happened for Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University.

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily.For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

Using nothing more than the basic principle of weight loss (consuming less calories that you end up burning during the course of the day), Mark lost 27 pounds. His BMI (Body Mass Index) went from a 28.1- considered to be overweight- to 24.9- listed as normal. His final weight was 174 pounds.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"

Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet.

"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."

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What Do You Think

Gay Marriage....

Is too important an issue for the Government to leave to the hands of the people... Should be a state's rights issue where the voice of the people will be heard... Isn't going to matter a hill of beans once the Chinese roll their tanks down the Pacific Coast Highway...